


three by three.

by waywardbubblegum



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Looooots of angst, M/M, Songfic, al dente - jack stauber, alcohol mention, but it might be entertaining ??, mentioned death of aaron burr?, the author has an Inconsistent Writing Style, this is more just mindless rambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 22:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19029631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardbubblegum/pseuds/waywardbubblegum
Summary: three by three.alexander hamilton and aaron burr.they always involve each other.they always involve others.they are a war.





	three by three.

**Author's Note:**

> hoo boy this is VERY angsty  
> like lots of death  
> by the way: begonias represent fear, cautiousness, and yellow flowers tend to be symbolic of bitterness  
> dandelions ,, kind of mean lion's tooth in french (the character that has dandelions was called little lion. like it's canon. in actual history)  
> frostweed ... i dunno, it represents winter?  
> all of the motifs/repetition in this story are intentional

_love valley, hi hi_

__

_(hi hi)_

__

_exactly!_

no one would say they fit together perfectly. lee was an aggressive coward. burr was brave, and somehow passive. lee spoke outwardly, he always voiced his opinions, even if his verbiage could never match hamilton’s. burr waited. he wasn’t late, he wasn’t falling behind, he was just.. lying in wait. he was saving his energy for the right moment. lee took every moment as the right one.

they met in war, and they are a war, and they loathe war and god do they love it.

but they were a dance. whenever burr would wait and utter a prophecy, lee would follow suit. when lee’s puppy dog-like bursts of rage would lead him away from rationality, burr wouldn’t hesitate to chase after him to slow him down. when they meet in a field of flowers, their hello-s are in unison as they laugh. the wind is slow and the breeze is a comfort. lee laughs when pollen sparkles in his hair, and burr does too, because _how does that happen?_ and lee says _i don’t know!_ and they laugh, like they’re children again.

as they dance together.

they taught each other things. lee began teaching burr the flaws in his philosophy of waiting. burr mellowed out lee’s temper. burr began taking opportunities that could benefit him, and was not only protecting his legacy, but defending it. fighting for it. he built it up with his intellect. and lee? lee was using his infuriated, overlooked intelligence to be more than a coward. he gave speeches on what he believed. he was progressive, a glorious anomaly.

_love valley, lo lo_

__

_(lo lo)_

__

_what’d you think?_

__

_life made you bitter_

__

_i can make you tender_

kisses, tongue, warmth, wetness. hands, fingers, nails. they fit together like a figure eight engraved in ice. they were clingy and never stopped touching each other, grabby and possessive and- behind closed doors, far too much. love that ripped them apart and calls it affectionate. heart eyes and making each other melt and compliments and too much passion and bickering and arguments and god, so much. too much. it never gets old despite the age lines they feel in their cheeks when they’re thirty years old.

they’re young and all it is is sex right now. it’s not emotional in the moment and it’s grabby and possessive and most of the time far too much, so much that they can’t feel it when it rips them apart and calls it affectionate, and some days burr wants to eat paint because he admires the art lee creates and just wants to be it so bad _why can’t he be it_ , and lee holds him close and burr is the coward this time and it’s just lee and it’s just burr and the comfort is _grabby_. everything about them is grabby and everything else because at this point, love is just routine.

but even when it’s too much it’s _soft_. their routine is plush and it’s warm and it’s a slowed pulse as one falls asleep, it’s a snowflake tasting like sugar when it’s nothing more than cold water, it may be grabby but the hands are everything but rough. and whenever lee picks up a pen and yells “what the hell am i writing,” and the bits and pieces of his scraggly hair are lost inside of the hands covering his face, burr assures him that it’s something brilliant.

when lee picks it back up, his grip is stronger. his words are firmer and burr watches from the other room and he’s amazed.

lee’s tired and stumbling out of bed and his arms are around burr’s waist, like it’s his crutch, supporting him when his eyes are sleepily closed and his limbs are sluggish. burr melts under the contact, and god, he never liked touching before, but lee’s warm but firm and he’s clingy but tiptoeing around affection, and it makes burr relate to him like he’s related to no one. all he does is lean into the touch, but it’s a strong “yes”.

_life made bitter_

_oh_

_can’t make you tender_

hamilton shot him.

he shot lee.

burr wasn’t there, evan edwards was his second, and- and lee called out his name when he fell and, and. everything is too much. there’s no lee but everything is grabby, he mourns almost possessive over lee’s grave and pins and needles bite at his skin like the grief wants him to just die and get in the ground with lee. and burr wants to. he tempts the grief with the taste of ink and the taste of paint and bashing his head against everything except the unfinished artwork lee left behind. he’s tempted to bring the paintings with him to cuddle with instead.

when burr visits his funeral, all he hears in gunshots and he smells gunpowder and death and suddenly the war feels so goddamn real. he pays his respects with all of his savings and he leaves a seashell and a vanilla flavoured stick in the ground there. the years fly by and yet creep along until it’s the late 1700s. he still thinks about how he wasn’t allowed to look into lee’s coffin. he still isn’t sure if he wanted to.

if he had just waited again, he thinks. if he- had just stayed behind, maybe he could’ve gotten lee to a doctor sooner, maybe burr could have encouraged him to not do it, or he could’ve gotten lee out of the way, _anything but this,_ burr thinks. that’s all he needs. he starts waiting for things again. he doesn’t want to risk the small things he has left.

“we used to dance here, you know.” burr takes hamilton to the flower field. there’s no wind and the war has left sandstorms of ash and dust and it’s painted the pollen an ugly brownish grey.

“what?” hamilton’s oblivious to what he’s done.

“lee and i.”

“oh. b-burr, i-”

“don’t.” burr pauses. he takes a moment to gather his strength and find more words. it still hurts, despite how much he’s lost, despite how much he should be used to losing by now. “don’t, apologise. it doesn’t fix anything.” there’s silence. for once, hamilton holds his tongue.

the field is filled with yellow begonias. lee wanted to be buried here if he died early, and he wanted his gravestone to have the flowers grow around it. burr bought his way through the process of making that happen and helped out himself. he didn’t feel as though he had any other choice- this was- this was lee.

“burr, i, he wasn’t a good general. he dragged his excellency’s name through the mud! he-” small faults. he seized opportunities.

“that’s not a license to shoot a man,” hamilton sputters for a moment, seeming to almost realise that _oh god. that was a mistake._

“he made thousands of others get either injured or without a life!”

“the deaths would have doubled if we didn’t pull back.” that was true- a battle in the war, somewhere in the middle of it, the memories were blurry, had almost twice the amount of soldiers against them than what america had.

“burr, you don’t need to defend him anymore, i’m sorry if your life is difficult without your _boy_ , but-” he doesn’t know if he’s seeing red or if his vision is being blurred by water. maybe both.

“stop, alexander.” he does. he’s silent. “he did the best he could.” it takes every amount of effort to not choke on his words. hamilton doesn’t say anything else when burr stands up and the two of them walk home.

_if it's sticking, it's done (uh oh)_

_don't think that just because i lick it, it's love_

_cherry on our complications_

_i don't think i'll ever get you_

theodosia is gorgeous. she’s a winter’s first snowflake and a toddler’s first winter. she is snow angels and soft lullabies and aaron burr loves her. he- he promises he does. he has to. he writes poems about her and puts them over the poems he wrote about lee and compares her steps to angel wings flapping and compares her hands to cotton, she glows like a halo and god, her voice is a harp. she’s everything he wants and everything he _needs._

when they meet, she’s nothing like lee. her movements are loose and she doesn’t care for calculations, she’s smart and she always knows when to say what, and she’s cold but flimsy, she eats vanilla flavoured sticks and taffy makes its way to america, and she says

“ _t for taffy! t for theodosia! i can be both,_ ” and burr just laughs, heavy and pained and soft, dust and ash being swept away by the wind. ugly brownish greys.

she doesn’t paint. she writes and she wasn’t made to be a housewife, but she cooks so well. it sounds like nothing and it sounds borderline silly, but one day burr almost breaks down in tears at the table because he’s had a stressful day at work and he went to see lee’s grave and he takes a bite of whatever she made, he’s forgotten now, and god it tastes like lee, god it smells like him, and then his eyes are full of water and theodosia runs to comfort him, because oh gosh, is her cooking really that bad? and burr says no.

burr says that it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. and the tears fall.

theodosia is going to have a baby. at first, burr says that’s good news. and then he realises that that’s synonymous with

theodosia is going to die. he can’t do it again. she gets to choose the name. burr works harder at his job to have enough money to pamper his wife and lee’s advice flickers in and out of him. he starts seizing opportunities again. that’s what theodosia deserves. hamilton is non-stop. levi weeks is innocent.

_cook it through_

_something to chew_

_better for you_

_better for you_

_(it's just as hard as you'd think)_

_cook my brain_

_what am I supposed to do?_

_gone_

_al dente, just firm enough to chew  
on_

theodosia dies when her daughter is ten years old. it’s a miracle that she lived that long- she was skin and bones from the moment theo was born. for the first few months after she did he just called his daughter junior. it grew on the both of them. she’s theodosia junior burr now. burr took her to the flower field when she felt well enough to leave the house. she asked to be buried next to lee.

he plants frostweed in the ground around her grave. tears fall. they’re the same colour as snowflakes. she always loved winter, god- she loved winter so much. he wonders if junior should have been named winter. he wonders that if you scream until your lungs grieve as well, and if no one’s around, then if you ever even screamed. he wonders if ghosts are real. he knows that if there is an afterlife, lee and theodosia will be best friends.

hamilton is always insensitive. burr always admired that somehow. everything about hamilton was overpowering, insulting, offensive, _confusing,_ they could never understand each other but burr always finds himself back with hamilton. he lost too. john. it’s, obvious that the more hamilton finds to say about john, burr realises that him and lee were just like hamilton and john. somehow, he feels closer to and further from hamilton at the same time.

when he goes to work two days after the funeral, hamilton has only bitter glances and narrow eyes and why, why is he so insensitive, why will he never listen, why will he never slow down, why did he show up to the funeral if he was just going to ridicul-

“mister burr, sir?” his voice is weak and concerned. it’s unfamiliar.

“secretary hamilton,”

 

“his excellency has, summoned me. i know you don’t have much political power at the moment, but- you’re persuasive. if i could, request you speak with mister james madison, on his plan to handle the traitors against the liquor taxing and relay the information to me at a later time?”

“of course, alexander.”

“i-i thank you very much, sir, do let me know if there’s anything you require from me in return,” and just like that, hamilton is scurrying away. despite burr not talking to madison, he finds he misses the momentary company of hamilton. he goes home and his mouth is cold without theodosia’s cooking. junior does her best, and burr has only weak smiles to offer in return. they appreciate the effort of each other.

_biting in, you'd make me grin_

__

_put good in me_

__

_something real or natural_

__

_like honesty_

_honestly, i hate to say it_

_(we both know a better way)_

_better way_

_some boy toy needs to stay_

_away from my brain_

hamilton is all burr can think about. on his daily stroll to water lee and theodosia’s(he can speak her name once more) flowers, he wonders if hamilton would like dandelions. burr thinks about theodosia and lee and hamilton and lingers on lee but then it’s just hamilton, hamilton, hamilton, hamilton. he thinks about the advice lee gave him. he thinks about the jokes theodosia made about him never speaking up. he thinks about being non-stop and hamilton.

he runs for president, and he almost wins. he finishes in second place. he doesn’t wait and all it gets him is a place that may as well be dead last. vice president, you don’t think of that as vice president, or a silver medal, you think of that as the one who _would’ve been president_ , but fell short. you think of federalists, _federalists_ , being the ones that caused your lack of presidency. vice, vice grip in the public’s hands. vice president.

burr begins to realise that hatred is why he can’t get hamilton out of his head. slutty positions and cheating on his wife and peach fuzz and fast words, scrawny frames and offense, and fast steps. he writes him a letter, _i send for your perusal-_

he’s fast as wildfire. he dodges the topic and dances a ballet around the question. _i regret to find in it nothing of that sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value-_ who does he think he is? world and essays he builds in his letters, when all burr has to offer is a few words and directness. and as the rage forms a tornado around him, burr fails to realise that this is the clearest he’s thought in years.

_if by a “definite reply” you mean the direct avowal or disavowal required in your first letter-_ he challenges hamilton to a duel. if he could just eradicate this loud-mouthed bother, then maybe he could have peace. maybe he could think again about something other than him. van ness writes pendleton and they row across the hudson. they’re in new jersey.

hamilton is wearing his glasses, hamilton is wearing his royal clothing, hamilton brings a pistol and it looks oddly familiar. if burr weren’t seeing red through his vision blurred by water, he might have been able to find out why. he doesn’t have any regrets as junior won’t be made an orphan, he doesn’t have any regret when he hears gunshots and smells gunpowder and death, he has no regret when suddenly the hatred doesn’t feel real. his mouth is cold with the taste of guilt and- fast words.

_if it's sticking, it's done_

_don't think that just because I lick it, it's love (oh)_

_cherry on our complications_

_i don't think I'll ever get you_

burr shot him.

he shot hamilton.

and the worst part? hamilton _smiled_. he felt the bullet in his chest and he smiled, he _died,_ and he smiled. burr doesn’t have any tears. his vision isn’t blurred. he sees hamilton dead and he’s confused just like he was when he lost lee, just like he was when he lost theodosia, just like he will be when he loses junior. he realises that _love_ is the reason he couldn’t get hamilton out of his head. that night, he drinks and drinks and he probably collapses on van ness.

burr uses the money he has to buy seeds. he remains on the down low, but until the day he dies, he still waters the flowers. whenever it rains, he doesn’t leave his house. if it rains generously, he stays inside another day. he’s safer when he’s not outside, when people can’t see him. he waters the yellow begonias, and the frostweed, and he plants dandelions.

when he dies, war is but an old friend.

**Author's Note:**

> jfeaklhfsdf i promise im working on write about my lack of moral compass  
> i just *really* got into leeburr last week and now??? we're here  
> once again, the product of being bored in class. summer is coming soon, which will either mean zero(0) updates OR an extreme amount of updates  
> look forward to that? more of my bad writing to laugh at afkjlehsdferd
> 
> if you wanna nag me to write more (or if you have any questions about the historical accuracy of the things i changed, sans theodosia jr being called junior) my discord is solarbix#3268  
> (aka: please talk to me i want more friends that are into hamilton)  
> ANYWAY hope you enjoyed !!!!!!! kudos and comments are super appreciated


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